Egypt’s president said on Monday Cairo was deeply concerned about security in the Red Sea following an attack by Yemen’s Houthis on two oil tankers that forced Saudi Arabia to suspend crude shipments temporarily through the strait of Bab al-Mandab.
Speaking at a joint press conference with his Yemeni counterpart, President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi also said Cairo was committed to helping Yemen regain its security after more than three years of war that has killed thousands of people.
“We categorically reject that Yemen would become a foothold for the influence of non-Arab forces, or a platform for security and stability threats against the brotherly Arab countries or freedom of navigation in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab Strait,” Sisi said, speaking alongside President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.
Last month, Saudi Arabia temporarily halted oil shipments through Bab al-Mandab citing security concerns after Iran-aligned Yemen’s Houthis attacked two oil tankers in the Red Sea near the strait with missiles, damaging one vessel.
Although Saudi Arabia resumed oil shipments through the strait several days later, the incident has highlighted the volatility of the situation in the area, where fighting between the Houthis and supporters of Hadi’s government has been raging since 2015.
Yemen lies along the southern end of the Red Sea, one of the most important trade routes in the world for oil tankers. The tankers pass near Yemen’s shores while heading from the Middle East through the Suez Canal to Europe.
Speaking after talks with Hadi in Cairo, Sisi said Egypt supported the internationally-recognized Yemeni government and was committed to helping it restore stability to the country.
Egypt, the most populous country in the Arab world, is a member of the Saudi-led coalition which intervened in Yemen’s civil war in 2015 to try to restore Hadi to power against what it sees as Iranian support for the Houthis.
But its role has been mainly to patrol Bab al-Mandab with naval vessels.
Hadi said he had briefed Sisi on what he called Iranian support for the Houthis in endangering security in the Red Sea.
“We discussed the dangers that the Red Sea had been exposed to because of the terrorism of the Houthi militias and its supporter, Iran, which aims not only to impact Red Sea security but Arab national security as a whole,” Hadi said.
Iran denies providing military support to the Houthis.
]]>https://en.smanews.org/egypt-voices-concern-over-red-sea-security-after-houthi-attack/feed0Israel’s Arab minority rallies against new nation-state lawhttps://en.smanews.org/israels-arab-minority-rallies-against-new-nation-state-law
https://en.smanews.org/israels-arab-minority-rallies-against-new-nation-state-law#respondSun, 12 Aug 2018 20:56:24 +0000https://en.smanews.org/?p=7747SMA News – Agencies

Thousands of protesters rallied in Tel Aviv on Saturday against Israel’s new law declaring it the nation-state of the Jewish people, legislation that has angered the country’s Arab minority and drawn criticism abroad.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has defended the law, which says only Jews have the right of self-determination in the country and downgrades Arabic from an official language, saying it is necessary in order to fend off Palestinian challenges to Jewish self-determination.
The protesters, mostly Israeli Arabs, waved Palestinian flags and held up signs that read ‘equality’ in Arabic and Hebrew.
“The law legitimizes racism,” said Laila al-Sana, 19, from a Bedouin village in Israel’s southern Negev desert. “It’s very important to show we are here, to resist,” she said.
Israel’s Arab population comprises mainly descendants of the Palestinians who remained on their land after the 1948 war at the time of the creation of the modern state of Israel. Hundreds of thousands were forced to leave their homes or fled.
Many of Israel’s Arab citizens also identify as Palestinian. They make up about a fifth of the state’s 9 million people. Israeli law grants them full equal rights, but many say they face discrimination and are treated as second-class citizens.
“When I heard about the law I felt I should defend my hometown, our land, the land of my ancestors,” said 68-year-old Sheikha Dabbah at the rally.
Largely declarative, the law was enacted just after the 70th anniversary of the birth of the state of Israel.
It stipulates that “Israel is the historic homeland of the Jewish people and they have an exclusive right to national self-determination in it”. It also downgrades Arabic from an official language alongside Hebrew to a “special status.”
“I feel ashamed that after 70 years I have to accentuate my nationalism instead of being generous toward all those who live here,” said Gila Zamir, 58, a Jewish Israeli from the Arab-Jewish city Haifa.
Netanyahu posted on his Twitter page a video from the demonstration of a few protesters waving the Palestinian flag and chanting: “With spirit, with blood we shall redeem you, Palestine” and wrote: “There is no better evidence of the nation-law’s necessity.” Separate TV footage showed a few Israeli flags being waved.
Critics have said the new law is undemocratic because it differentiates between Jewish and non-Jewish citizens. Its defenders say civil equality is guaranteed in existing legislation.
Arab leaders in Israel have said the law verges on apartheid. Rights groups and Jewish groups in the Diaspora have spoken against the legislation, as have the EU, Egypt and Israel’s own president.
Last Saturday a protest against the law by Israel’s Druze community, which numbers about 120,000 citizens, drew a far larger crowd.
The Druze are ethnic Arab members of a religious minority that is an offshoot of Islam incorporating elements of other faiths.
Their outrage over the law has had more resonance in Israel, despite their small numbers, because of their reputation as loyal supporters of the state. Unlike the wider Arab population, many Druze serve in Israel’s conscript military and security forces, and some have risen high in the ranks.
Druze leaders have voiced a deep sense of betrayal over the law, striking a chord among many Israelis. However, efforts by Netanyahu to appease the Druze community have so far failed.
]]>https://en.smanews.org/israels-arab-minority-rallies-against-new-nation-state-law/feed0Syrian rebels build an army with Turkish help, face challengeshttps://en.smanews.org/syrian-rebels-build-an-army-with-turkish-help-face-challenges
https://en.smanews.org/syrian-rebels-build-an-army-with-turkish-help-face-challenges#respondSun, 12 Aug 2018 20:49:19 +0000https://en.smanews.org/?p=7741SMA News – Agencies

A “National Army” being set up by Syrian rebels with Turkey’s help could become a long-term obstacle to President Bashar al-Assad’s recovery of the northwest – if they can end factional rivalries that have long blighted the opposition.
The effort is at the heart of plans by the Turkish-backed opposition to secure and govern a strip of territory that forms part of the last big rebel stronghold in Syria.
The presence of Turkish forces on the ground has helped to shield it from government attack.
Assad, backed by Russia and Iran, has vowed to recover “every inch” of Syria, and though he has now won back most of the country, the Turkish presence will complicate any government offensive in the northwest.
Turkey’s role has gone beyond supporting allied Syrian forces to rebuilding schools and hospitals. At least five branches of the Turkish post office have opened in the area.
Colonel Haitham Afisi, head of the National Army, says setting up the force has been no easy task over the last year.
“We are at the beginning. We face many difficulties but we are working to overcome them,” Afisi told Reuters in an interview in the town of Azaz near the Turkish border.
Recently, he had to issue an order instructing fighters to stop “randomly opening fire”, wear uniforms and cooperate with a newly established military police that represents “the force of law and justice and not a rival to any other faction”.
Factions have also been banned from operating their own jails and courts and from carrying out extra-judicial arrests.
The project has also faced attack: a number of recruits were wounded on Aug. 5 when their graduation ceremony in the city of al-Bab was shelled. Afisi said it was the work of an “enemy of the revolution, be they internal or external”. The perpetrator had been identified, but he declined to say it who was.
The National Army compromises some 35,000 fighters from some of the biggest factions in the war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and forced some 11 million people from their homes over the last seven years.
Many previous efforts to unite the rebels have failed, obstructed by local rivalries and at times by the competing agendas of foreign states that once backed many of the rebels in the Syrian war.
The National Army could be different because of Turkey’s presence on the ground.
The Turkish military pushed into the northwest in two campaigns. The first, “Euphrates Shield”, which got underway in 2016, drove Islamic State from territory between Azaz and Jarablus. The second, “Olive Branch”, captured the adjoining Afrin region from the Kurdish YPG militia earlier this year.
The area is important to Turkey because of what it views as the national security threat posed by the YPG, which it sees as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a three-decade insurgency in Turkey.
Assad says Turkey is illegally occupying Syrian land.
“All the support for the National Army is from Turkey, there are no other states partnering in this matter,” Afisi said.
The Turkish foreign ministry did not respond to questions from Reuters.
Turkish support includes fighters’ wages, logistical support “and weapons if necessary”. He listed three enemies: Assad, the PKK and Islamic State.
Turkey has also set up 12 military posts in Idlib province and adjoining areas which are located southwest of Afrin, under an agreement with Russia and Iran. The stated aim is to observe a “de-escalation” agreement in the Idlib area.
Assad has indicated Idlib could be his next target.
Afisi said the National Army could be quickly merged with Turkish-backed rebels in Idlib if necessary.
The situation in Idlib is complicated by the presence of well-armed jihadists that have fought with the other groups.
“We are ready and extend our hand to all groups that represent the goals of the revolution,” he said.
]]>https://en.smanews.org/syrian-rebels-build-an-army-with-turkish-help-face-challenges/feed0Syrian air defenses confront ‘hostile target’ near Damascus: state mediahttps://en.smanews.org/syrian-air-defenses-confront-hostile-target-near-damascus-state-media
https://en.smanews.org/syrian-air-defenses-confront-hostile-target-near-damascus-state-media#respondSun, 12 Aug 2018 15:53:23 +0000https://en.smanews.org/?p=7723SMA News – Agencies

Syrian state media said early on Saturday that air defenses had confronted a “hostile target” breaching Syrian air space west of the capital Damascus.
State news agency SANA, quoting its correspondent, said there were reports of “air defenses confronting a hostile target breaching the skies above the area of Deir al-Asha’ir in the Damascus countryside.”
]]>https://en.smanews.org/syrian-air-defenses-confront-hostile-target-near-damascus-state-media/feed0Iraq opposes U.S. sanctions on Iran but will abide by them: PMhttps://en.smanews.org/iraq-opposes-u-s-sanctions-on-iran-but-will-abide-by-them-pm
https://en.smanews.org/iraq-opposes-u-s-sanctions-on-iran-but-will-abide-by-them-pm#respondThu, 09 Aug 2018 06:31:56 +0000https://en.smanews.org/?p=7646SMA News – Agencies

Iraq does not agree with U.S. sanctions against Iran but will abide by them to protect its own interests, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Tuesday.
“As a matter of principle we are against sanctions in the region. Blockade and sanctions destroy societies and do not weaken regimes,” he said at a news conference.
“We consider them (sanctions on Iran) a strategic mistake and incorrect but we will abide by them to protect the interests of our people. We will not interact with them or support them but we will abide by them,” he added.
U.S. President Donald Trump pledged on Tuesday that firms doing business with Tehran would be barred from the United States, as new U.S. sanctions against Iran took effect.
The United States and Iran, increasingly at odds, are Iraq’s two biggest allies, and the sanctions put Abadi’s outgoing government in a difficult position.
Tuesday’s sanctions target Iran’s purchases of U.S. dollars, metals trading, coal, industrial software and the auto sector. Global oil prices rose on Tuesday on concern sanctions could cut world supply, although the toughest measures targeting Iran’s oil exports do not take effect for four more months.
]]>https://en.smanews.org/iraq-opposes-u-s-sanctions-on-iran-but-will-abide-by-them-pm/feed0Israel says Gaza truce talks focus on easing closure in return for calmhttps://en.smanews.org/israel-says-gaza-truce-talks-focus-on-easing-closure-in-return-for-calm
https://en.smanews.org/israel-says-gaza-truce-talks-focus-on-easing-closure-in-return-for-calm#respondTue, 07 Aug 2018 07:54:07 +0000https://en.smanews.org/?p=7591SMA News – Agencies

Israel set out limited goals for Gaza truce talks on Sunday, saying the focus was on a proposal to ease its blockade of the Islamist Hamas-controlled territory in return for the Palestinians calming their side of the frontier.
The Israeli statement came hours before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened his security cabinet to discuss, and possibly approve U.N.- and Egyptian-brokered ideas for preventing another threatened Gaza war.
A very brief statement issued after the meeting ended revealed little. It said that Israel’s military chief had briefed the cabinet about the situation in the Gaza Strip and that the army was “prepared for any scenario.”
The United Nations and Egypt have not publicly detailed their proposals. They have spoken generally of a need to improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza, stem cross-border hostilities and reconcile Hamas – which refuses formal peacemaking with Israel – to its Western-backed Palestinian rivals.
Gaza, under years of grinding Israeli and Egyptian sanctions aimed at isolating Hamas, has seen a surge in tensions since Palestinians launched weekly border protests on March 30, drawing Israeli army fire that has killed at least 157 people.
There have also been shelling exchanges between Hamas-led militants and Israel in which around 10 Palestinian gunmen and four civilians have died, Gaza sniper attacks that killed an Israeli soldier and wounded another, and wide-scale brushfires set in Israel by incendiary kites and helium balloons from Gaza.
Israel responded on July 9 by shuttering Gaza’s main commercial terminal and limiting a Palestinian fishing zone off the enclave, measures it offered to reverse on Sunday.
“A complete ceasefire (by the Palestinians) will lead, on Israel’s part, to the reopening of the Kerem Shalom crossing and renewal of the permits given in respect to the fishing zones,” said the Israeli official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
This offer would be the focus of Sunday’s deliberations, the official said, adding that any eventual broader agreement over Gaza would require a guarantee for the return of the remains of two Israeli soldiers killed in the 2014 Israel-Hamas war, and two civilians lost in Gaza.
Hamas has linked their fate to Israel freeing Palestinian security detainees – something many Israelis oppose.
Hamas, which convened several of its top leaders to Gaza last week for consultations, also sounded circumspect on Sunday.
“Hamas has conducted internal meetings that have not yet ended,” one senior official, Hussam Badran, told a Gaza radio station.
“The suffering of our people, and the 12-year blockade imposed with no guilt on their part, requires that all Palestinian leaders search for a real solution to this suffering … without giving concessions when it comes to the known and outstanding positions and rights of our people.”
More than two million Palestinians, mostly the stateless descendants of people who were driven out or fled from territory that is now Israel at its founding in 1948, are packed into the narrow strip.
Israel withdrew its troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005, but maintains tight control of its land and sea borders. Egypt also restricts movement in and out of Gaza on its border.
Israel, the United States and other Western countries regard Hamas as a terrorist organization. Israel and Hamas have fought three wars since 2008, the last of them in 2014.
The Fatah movement of Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas who holds sway in the Israeli-occupied West Bank has denounced the talks. A spokesman said any deal risked ending hopes of achieving Palestinian statehood.
“(A deal would bring about a) separation of Gaza from the rest of the homeland and would create a mini-state which will be the graveyard of our national project,” said Munir Al-Ghaghoub, a spokesman for Abbas’s Fatah movement.
But after a meeting of Palestinian faction representatives including Fatah, Hamas’s Badran said: “There will be no state in Gaza and no state without Gaza.”
In what appeared to be a confidence-building gesture by Cairo, a pro-Hamas website said Egypt was on Sunday beginning to allow cooking gas across its border to Gaza to make up for the shortfall in Israeli supplies.
Also on Sunday, the Israeli military said it fired toward a vehicle used by Palestinian balloon-launchers in Gaza on Sunday. Palestinian medics said four people were wounded.
Israel’s Defence Ministry released first images of the barrier it has built along the border with the Gaza Strip that stretches into the sea, and which it began constructing two months ago.
Built up with rocks and gravel, it stretches 200 meters from the shore into the Mediterranean. It is 50 meters wide and a six-meter high steel fence is placed next to it facing the Gaza side which will have surveillance devices placed on it.
]]>https://en.smanews.org/israel-says-gaza-truce-talks-focus-on-easing-closure-in-return-for-calm/feed0Israel and Jordan kill Islamic State fighters flushed out of Syriahttps://en.smanews.org/israel-and-jordan-kill-islamic-state-fighters-flushed-out-of-syria
https://en.smanews.org/israel-and-jordan-kill-islamic-state-fighters-flushed-out-of-syria#respondFri, 03 Aug 2018 11:38:51 +0000https://en.smanews.org/?p=7502SMA News – Agencies

Israel and Jordan said on Thursday that their forces had killed Islamic State insurgents who approached their borders after being squeezed out of southwestern Syria by the army of President Bashar al-Assad.

In a nod to his battlefield gains, Israel described victory by Assad, who is on a last push to restore his rule after more than seven years of civil war, as a fait accompli that could calm the Golan Heights.
The strategic plateau divides Israel and Syria, old foes, and saw decades of stable stand-off before the Syrian rebellion.
Meanwhile, in a major change to the pre-conflict 2011 status quo, Russian military police began deploying on the Syrian-held Golan and planned to set up eight observation posts in the area, the Defence Ministry in Moscow said.
After weeks of intensive Russian-backed bombing, Syrian forces have seized the lush farmland where the Yarmouk River flows that was once controlled by a group affiliated to Islamic State known as the Khaled Bin Walid Army.
The Israeli military said it carried out an air strike on the Golan on Wednesday night, killing seven insurgents it believed were from the Khaled Bin Walid Army and en route to attack an Israeli target.
Separately, the Jordan military said it had clashed with encroaching Khaled Bin Walid Army fighters for 24 hours between Tuesday and Wednesday, killing an unspecified number of them.
“We applied rules of engagement and members of the Daesh (Islamic State) gang were forced to retreat inside Syria,” an army source told Jordanian state news agency Petra.
Assad’s sweep of southwest Syria drove hundreds of thousands of refugees toward Israel and Jordan, alarming both.
As tensions peaked last week, Israel shot down a Syrian warplane that it said had strayed into the Israeli-occupied Golan and warned Assad’s Iranian and Lebanese Hezbollah reinforcements against trying to deploy on the Syrian-held side.
But Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman sounded more upbeat on Thursday as he described an Assad win as a given.
“From our perspective, the situation is returning to how it was before the civil war, meaning there is a real address, someone responsible, and central rule,” Lieberman told reporters during a tour of air defense units in northern Israel.
Asked whether Israel should be less wary of possible flare-ups on the Golan – much of which it seized from Syria in a 1967 war and annexed in a move not recognized abroad – Lieberman said: “I believe so. I think this is also in Assad’s interest.”
There was no immediate Syrian government response to the border clashes reported by Jordan and Syria on Thursday.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitoring group, confirmed fighting between Assad’s forces and Islamic State on the Syrian-held Golan, which also abuts Jordan.
In Moscow, the Russian Defence Ministry said its deployment of military police on the Syrian-held Golan was aimed at supporting a decades-old U.N. peacekeeper presence.
It said the new Russian posts would be handed over to the Syrian government once the situation had stabilized.
Lieberman said that, for there to be long-term quiet between Israel and Syria, Assad must abide by a 1974 U.N.-monitored armistice that set up demilitarized zones on the Golan.
Lieberman reiterated Israel’s demand that Iran not set up military bases against it in Syria, nor that Syria be used to smuggle arms to Hezbollah guerrillas in neighboring Lebanon.

Russia will deploy its military police on the Golan Heights frontier between Syria and Israel, its defense ministry said on Thursday, after weeks of mounting volatility in the area.
Russia will deploy its military police on the Golan Heights frontier between Syria and Israel, its defense ministry said on Thursday, after weeks of mounting volatility in the area.
Sergei Rudskoi, a senior Russian defense ministry official, said that Russian military police had on Thursday begun patrolling in the Golan Heights and planned to set up eight observation posts in the area.
He said the Russian presence there was in support of United Nations peacekeepers on the Golan Heights who, he said, had suspended their activities in the area in 2012 because their safety was endangered.
“Today, UN peacekeepers accompanied by Russian military police conducted their first patrols in six years in the separation zone,” Rudskoi told a briefing for journalists in Moscow.
“With the aim of preventing possible provocations against UN posts along the ‘Bravo’ line, the deployment is planned of eight observation posts of Russia’s armed forces’ military police,” Rudskoi said.
He said the Russian presence there was temporary, and that the observation posts would be handed over to Syrian government forces once the situation stabilized.
The deployment of the Russian military police highlights the degree to which the Kremlin has become an influential actor in Middle East conflicts since its military intervention in Syria which turned the tide of the war in Assad’s favor.
Israel has been lobbying the Kremlin to use its influence with Assad, and with Tehran, to try to get the Iranian military presence in Syria scaled back.
Israel sees Iran, and Iran’s allies in the Hezbollah Shi’ite military, as a direct threat to its national security. That message was conveyed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Russian President Vladimir Putin when they met in Moscow last month, a senior Israeli official said. Iranian forces have withdrawn their heavy weapons in Syria to a distance of 85 km (53 miles) from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, TASS quoted a Russian envoy as saying on Wednesday, but Israel deemed the pullback inadequate.
]]>https://en.smanews.org/russia-to-deploy-military-police-on-golan-heights/feed0Palestinian teen freed from Israel jail will continue resistance-as lawyerhttps://en.smanews.org/palestinian-teen-freed-from-israel-jail-will-continue-resistance-as-lawyer
https://en.smanews.org/palestinian-teen-freed-from-israel-jail-will-continue-resistance-as-lawyer#respondSun, 29 Jul 2018 23:22:10 +0000https://en.smanews.org/?p=7398SMA News – Agencies

A Palestinian teenager released by Israel on Sunday after completing a prison term for kicking and slapping an Israeli soldier said she wanted to become a lawyer so she could continue her struggle against the occupation of the West Bank.
Ahed Tamimi, 17, became a hero to Palestinians after the incident last December outside her home in Nabi Saleh, a village that has for years campaigned against land seizures by Israel, leading to confrontations with the Israeli military and Jewish settlers.
Israelis regarded the incident, which Tamimi’s mother relayed live on Facebook, as a staged provocation.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas described Tamimi as “a model of peaceful civil resistance …, proving to the world that our Palestinian people will stand firm and constant on their land, no matter what the sacrifice”.
He made the statement published by the official news agency Wafa after he met Tamimi and her mother.
Wearing her trademark black-and-white chequered Arab scarf when she returned home, Tamimi greeted dozens of well-wishers. Outside the home of a villager killed by Israeli forces, she urged continued struggle against Israel’s occupation.
At a news conference later, she spoke in front of a bare two-pronged tree that had been shaped like a giant slingshot, with the trunk covered in a Palestinian flag and with a tyre at its base.
“I will continue my university tuition and I will study law so that I can address the cause of my country in all of the international forums and to be able to represent the prisoners’ cause,” Tamimi said.
“Prison taught me a lot of things, I was able to figure out the right way to deliver the message of my homeland.”
Tamimi, who was 16 at the time of her detention, faced 12 charges but in March pleaded guilty to a reduced charge sheet that included assault. She was sentenced to eight months, dating back to her arrest in December.
Palestinians want the West Bank for a future state, along with East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. Most countries consider Israeli settlements in the West Bank to be illegal, something Israel disputes.
U.S.-sponsored negotiations on founding a Palestinian state alongside Israel have been stalled since 2014.
Tamimi’s case drew global attention and Amnesty International said her sentence was at odds with international law.
Separately on Sunday, an Israeli naval vessel intercepted a civilian boat bound for the Gaza Strip that had set off from Europe. Israel maintains a maritime blockade of the Strip and said the boat was being towed to the port of Ashdod.
]]>https://en.smanews.org/palestinian-teen-freed-from-israel-jail-will-continue-resistance-as-lawyer/feed0Israeli police raid al-Aqsa mosque after clashes; two dead in Gazahttps://en.smanews.org/israeli-police-raid-al-aqsa-mosque-after-clashes-two-dead-in-gaza
https://en.smanews.org/israeli-police-raid-al-aqsa-mosque-after-clashes-two-dead-in-gaza#respondSat, 28 Jul 2018 22:46:25 +0000https://en.smanews.org/?p=7368SMA News – Agencies

Israeli troopers entered Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque, the third-holiest shrine in Islam, and carried out arrests on Friday in what police described as a pursuit of youths who had lobbed rocks and fireworks during clashes with its forces outside.
The rare raid, on a site that is an emblem of Palestinians’ statehood hopes and a frequent catalyst of their conflict with Israel, came as medics in Gaza said Israeli army gunfire killed two people – including a boy – during a weekly border protest.
A police spokesman said the troopers were sent into al-Aqsa after suspects who had barricaded themselves in after running confrontations in the surrounding compound, during which masked men launched firecrackers from handheld canisters.
There was no immediate word of any violence in the mosque, whose older male worshippers said they had been allowed to exit after being searched. Witnesses later saw around 20 younger men detained by police, and said mosque prayers later resumed.
Police put the number of arrests at 24, and said four of its officers were injured in the melee. Muslim authorities said dozens of people were hurt by Israeli police stun grenades.
“The continued Israeli attacks against occupied Jerusalem will increase tensions and will drag the region into a religious war that we have long warned against,” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s office said in a statement.
Al Aqsa compound, also revered by Jews as a vestige of their two ancient temples, was among areas Israel captured in a 1967 war with Jordan, which retains a stewardship role at the mosque.
In Gaza, medics said a man and a 14-year-old boy were killed and dozens wounded by army fire, bringing to 154 the Palestinian death toll during demonstrations launched on March 30 to demand rights to land lost to Israel in the 1948 war of its founding.
The dead man, 43-year-old Ghazi Abu Mustafa, was brought to a hospital tent staffed by his wife, a medic, who collapsed when she discovered him among the casualties, her colleagues said.
The Israeli military said troops opened fire to hold off thousands of Palestinians, some of whom threw rocks and rolled burning tyres at the border fence in attempts to sabotage it.
Israel says its lethal tactics are needed to prevent armed infiltrations and accuses Gaza’s Islamist Hamas rulers of encouraging the disturbances to distract from their governance problems under an Israeli-Egyptian blockade. Hamas denies this.
While several foreign powers have censured Israel’s handling of Gaza, the United States has echoed its blaming of Hamas.
The four months of Gaza tensions have also seen cross-border shelling and gunfire exchange. Over the last week, an Israeli soldier was killed and another wounded by what the army said were Gaza snipers, and seven Hamas gunmen died in air strikes.
Israel has lost tracts of farmland and forests to fires set by kites and helium balloons, laden with incendiary material and flown over from Gaza. The Israelis have responded by preventing the entry of non-essential commercial goods to Gaza.
In the occupied West Bank, another territory where Palestinians want independence, a teenaged Palestinian knifed a Jewish settler to death and wounded two others on Thursday before being shot and killed. Locals said that Israeli troops, raiding the assailant’s village on Friday, wounded a man.
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